


maybe i can fool myself

by earnmysong



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnmysong/pseuds/earnmysong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It only takes thirty seconds for the operation to go from smooth to nearly disastrous.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe i can fool myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petragem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petragem/gifts).



> Prompt: _elizabeth/phillip + family vacation + bruised_. Hope this lives up to the hype, lady! The title is taken from Go West’s _King of Wishful Thinking_. Disclaimer: _The Americans_ is property of its rightful owners – people other than myself.

\----

It only takes thirty seconds for the operation to go from smooth to nearly disastrous. 

Thirty seconds is the difference between delivering a crippling blow to the target’s skull, disabling him and effectively carrying out the objective, and allowing the man enough of a window to drive her backward onto the asphalt, fist connecting solidly with her face. 

While the punch doesn’t knock her unconscious, she’s stunned for a few seconds, her body on enough of an autopilot to bring her hands up to block any subsequent hits. She regains her equilibrium while the target is in the process of attempting to shatter her nose, uses her elbow to mirror his intended action on his own body. He falls to his knees clutching his face as blood begins to drip through his fingers in a steady stream. She takes advantage of the opportunity, the butt of her gun connecting solidly with his head. She leaves him in a crumpled heap on the concrete, the information he had been so loath to part with tucked safely into the pocket of her jacket. 

(Killing this man is not part of the job, at least not tonight. She only deviates from their carefully constructed scripts out of necessity, and this situation is definitely not dire enough to warrant that.)

As she walks toward Phillip, a few feet away dealing with a target of his own, her ankle throbs uncomfortably. She doesn’t flinch. A broken bone is nothing to cry over, she tells herself. It could have been far worse. 

(She stops her thoughts short of imagining the myriad ways how.) 

Phillip incapacitates his opponent just before she reaches him, hands stuffed nonchalantly in her pockets, hair blowing gently in the wind. His eyes meet hers as he gets to his feet, comes to stand in front of her. There is a second where nothing happens; then he’s reaching out, moving a strand of hair that somehow found its way into her mouth back behind her ear where it belongs.

“You get it?” he asks, switching to all business before she can admonish him for letting his emotions compromise the mission.

She smiles, retrieves the folded piece of paper, holds it out to him as proof of her success. Her head tilts to the side, wordlessly asking him the same question.

“Yeah. Right here.” He gestures to the hat he’s taken to always wearing, the one with the neat slit cut into the wool.

“Let’s get out of here.” She doesn’t laugh at the fact that he hides important documents in his hat, but she allows a small smile to ghost across her lips unhindered because, as hard as she tries to ignore it, it is amusing. Turning to start in the direction of the car, she forgets about her injury, puts her full weight on her right foot as she steps forward. She bites her lip to keep from crying out, blinks to clear her watering eyes.

Phillip catches the change in her face almost immediately, slings her arm over his shoulder, gets them both where they need to go.

\----

Neither of them remembers that the next day is the beginning of the kids’ spring break. Philip usually keeps impeccable track of these things (she’s not so bad herself), but the last two weeks have been particularly hectic. The fact that the op into which they’d put such effort had culminated in a three am emergency room visit is just the icing on the cake, so to speak.

“Sorry, sweetheart, no New York,” Elizabeth hears Phillip say as she makes her way down the stairs. She can tell from his tone that he’s talking to Paige. “Right now, it’s better we stick around here. Maybe this summer.”

The damn cast slows her pace considerably, makes her want to crawl out of her skin in a way she hasn’t wanted to in about fifteen years. It’s not as if this is her first injury, far from it. This is the first time, though, that her ability to defend herself has been compromised. She despises the feeling.

She steels her features into a decent attempt at an emotion other than rage, pushes open the kitchen door with the end of a crutch. Henry looks up from his Lucky Charms at the sound, is out of his chair and at her elbow in the blink of an eye. He tells her not to feel bad about falling down the stairs, he almost did it himself last week. She glares at Phillip over Henry’s head as she lowers herself into a chair; his only response to her ire is a shrug, as if to say _you could’ve done better?_

“Hey, Mom, think you’re up for the First Ladies?” Elizabeth is surprised by Paige’s question, can’t help but wonder if pity is prompting it. This is something they haven’t done in what feels like a lifetime.

(Starting when Paige was a toddler, the three of them would go to the Museum of American History every year, a Jennings family ritual; Henry blended right in when he came along. Elizabeth hated it at first, seeing the useless extravagance of a country laid out for all to see. Over the years, though, it became an activity that, while still not enjoyable, was an expected part of the routine. Then Paige had hit the age where it was no longer acceptable to go out with one’s parents, and the routine had shifted yet again.)

“I think I can swing it,” she says, Henry and Phillip lobbying for Air and Space as soon as the words are out of her mouth.


End file.
